Discipline of Public Health, School of Population Health and Clinical Practice, The University of Adelaide, South Australia.
Pharmacoeconomics. 2011 Aug;29(8):653-71. doi: 10.2165/11588380-000000000-00000.
Cost-of-illness (COI) studies aim to assess the economic burden of health problems on the population overall, and they are conducted for an ever widening range of health conditions and geographical settings. While they attract much interest from public health advocates and healthcare policy makers, inconsistencies in the way in which they are conducted and a lack of transparency in reporting have made interpretation difficult, and have ostensibly limited their usefulness. Yet there is surprisingly little in the literature to assist the non-expert in critically evaluating these studies. This article aims to provide non-expert readers with a straightforward guide to understanding and evaluating traditional COI studies. The intention is to equip a general audience with an understanding of the most important issues that influence the validity of a COI study, and the ability to recognize the most common limitations in such work.
疾病经济负担（COI）研究旨在评估整体人群中健康问题的经济负担，它们针对越来越广泛的健康状况和地理环境进行。虽然它们引起了公共卫生倡导者和医疗保健政策制定者的极大兴趣，但由于在进行方式上存在不一致性，以及报告缺乏透明度，使得解释变得困难，表面上限制了它们的有用性。然而，文献中几乎没有什么内容可以帮助非专业人士批判性地评估这些研究。本文旨在为非专业读者提供一份通俗易懂的指南，帮助他们理解和评估传统的 COI 研究。其目的是使普通读者了解影响 COI 研究有效性的最重要问题，并能够识别此类工作中最常见的局限性。
